1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a device for increasing blood flow in, reducing pressure around and decreasing pain in a body part by surrounding the body part with a hollow hypobaric chamber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many patients, particularly diabetic patients, tend to suffer from poor blood flow and neuropathic pain. An insufficient amount of insulin in the body and an excessive amount of sugar in the blood leads to neuropathic pain in body parts of diabetic patients. In order to reduce pain in body parts, diabetics and other groups of patients who suffer from pain due to poor blood flow need increased blood flow in their body parts.
Prior art methods of alleviating pain associated with diabetes comprise medication, exercise and dieting. However, these methods may show limited results and value in reducing neuropathic pain.
In addition, there are a wide variety of prior art devices designed to assist blood circulation. Examples of such prior art devices include: U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,164 issued to Cooper on Mar. 19, 1991, which discloses a circulation enhancing apparatus comprising an airtight boot contoured to fit the injured human foot along with a modulator for providing cyclic over-pressure and vacuum pulses to the boot in synchronism with the heart's systolic and diastolic pressure pulsations; U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,047 issued to Tripp on Sep. 25, 1990, which discloses a flexible lower body negative pressure anti-G suit for protecting against the adverse effects of +G(z-axis) acceleration.
While the devices of the prior art are designed to provide for negative pressure chambers, the prior art devices do not reduce neuropathic pains associated with diabetes.